Okay, let’s say you have 2500 songs. To simplify, let’s say that’s 10 songs per album for a total of 250 albums. And we’ll define "repeat" as "hearing a song from the same album you’ve already heard a song from". How often will you hear a repeat (by that definition)?

By the time you get to the 20th song, the odds of having heard at least one repeat by the same artists is an extremely surprising 76%!

I’d love to see that math verified . . .>

UPDATE: January 24, 2005 6:30 am

Tobias Brandt weighs in on the subject of the Math of shuffle play

"I disagree with Prof. Booty’s analysis of the probability of getting a repeat album within 20 songs and my own analysis puts the odds at 54%. (See spreadsheet used to get the result). The spreadsheet also has the benefit of being able to account for excluding repeats of previous songs, a feature many media players have.

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